you just do the file (or you eval the result of the database query), and your second program can use the value computed by the first program.

... or discover that some black hat has replaced your file with one containing system('rm -rf /')

Data::Dumper is not a good method of doing persistence, because of the need to evaluate the stored file as actual Perl code using do or eval your code is only as secure as your file storage.

If you must have a Human Readable persistent storage then you probaby want to look at Data::DumpXML or Data::Denter

/J\